An honorable failure: heartfelt, unflinching, and oddly compelling. But this author has done, and will again do, much better.
The universal fears crystallized by 9/11 provide the initially gripping, ultimately limiting core material of this overheated tenth novel from the Booker-winning British author best known for her Regeneration Trilogy.
Very capably written and insistently readable, it’s an eventful narrative focused initially on sculptress Kate Frobisher, whose photojournalist husband Ben had moved on from covering the destroyed Twin Towers to Afghanistan, where he was killed by a sniper. Kate’s story soon meshes with that of Stephen Sharkey, whose own experience of 9/11 coincided with the discovery of his wife’s adultery. After divorcing her, Stephen moves in with his physician brother Robert’s family in rural northern England, not far from Kate’s home—and begins a book on the phenomenon of violence and our responses to it. Barker skillfully connects these protagonists and the acquaintances of each. Stephen falls for 19-year-old Justine Brathwaite, a vicar’s daughter employed as an au pair caring for Robert Sharkey’s autistic ten-year-old son Adam. And Kate, who’s temporarily disabled following a car crash, continues work on a huge statue of Christ commissioned for a cathedral—with the hired assistance of Peter Wingrave, a menacing loner (and hopeful fiction writer) with a violent past, who is Justine’s former boyfriend. Nobody heals, because Barker constructs an atmosphere so charged with real and threatened violence that her characters can scarcely breathe without screaming. Stephen attends the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, where incriminating photographs display “Human bodies baked like dog turds in the sun.” The Sharkeys’ house is burgled, and Justine brutally injured. Robert Sharkey researches “treatments for Parkinson’s and dementia.” Barker’s characters share virtually no moments that are not claustrophobic, fearful, or death-haunted. Consequently, however vividly and powerfully their experiences strike us, they are, in the final analysis, simply not credible.
An honorable failure: heartfelt, unflinching, and oddly compelling. But this author has done, and will again do, much better.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-374-20905-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2003
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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